First of all, I really hope we start reading something other than Marinetti soon, because "avante-garde" is such a cool sounding title, and I'm really hoping that other avante-gardes are not nearly as whiny and full of themselves as this guy is (although I don't really think it'll turn out that way). The whole concept of being avante-garde, of being "modern," or futuristic or what have you, should really be a positive concept -- I think so, anyway. And I feel like the authors in these Manifestos (mainly Marinetti, but since they all are kind of in the same vein of thought, I'm just gonna go ahead and say all of them for the sake of simplicity) were really just being brash and immature about the whole thing. They're basically like, "I'm sick of this shit, I'm bored, bla bla bla, let's destroy everything because you guys suck and we're smarter than you."
I mean, really? I think that it's good that these guys wanted to go against the system, and tradition, and change things and what have you... I think there will always be people who feel that way, and that it will be a necessary part of our existence, as creatures that rely on connections to others of our kind. But this is not the way to go about doing it.
I also really was, honestly, offended by Marinetti's explanation of "contempt for women" and his idea that we should just abolish the concept of love. Um, what? For a minute, the contempt for woman thing kind of sounded as if it was going in a feminist direction, but really what I took from that bit was that Marinetti's sole reason as to why women should be equal is just because it would piss "the man" off, and kind of upset the structured order of things as they were (the government, etc). Plus, I feel like if we got rid of the concept of love (if that is even possible, it sounds like this guy had girlfriend issues) and lived and had sex only to reproduce... I mean, maybe this sounds foolish of me, but what would the point of human existence be? Tooooo continue destroying the past and waging war? So, we'd just always be waging war, erasing our memory of it, and doing it over again. Yeah, sounds pretty fulfilling.
Anyway, the direction that these manifestos are going is not something that I like. First of all, you can't just destroy the past because you're bored with it. For one -- and this is coming from me, as an artist -- nothing is original.* Two, that would mean that everything that these guys are so desperate to destroy, and to replace, would constantly have to be replaced and then destroyed themselves. That doesn't make any sense. Plus, if that were to happen, nobody would be intelligent enough to read these manifestos and figure out what the hell they were supposed to be doing, so it would just be a complete mess.
I think these guys (/this guy) had parental issues, and really should have gone and patched things up with mum before going and writing all this, because it makes them all sound like gigantic whiny babies, in my opinion. I'm just really glad that everybody didn't read this stuff and catch on to it, because I would imagine our world would be terrifying today if that had happened.
* This is not to say that something new, revolutionary, important, controversial, etc. can't be created. It mostly depends on the context that the work is presented in, and the time period. I just need to say this, because "nothing is original" sounds pretty negative, and I really don't mean it that way - it's just the truth. And yes, I just added a footnote to my blog post.
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